


Lunatic

by InTheArmsofaThief



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hallucinations, M/M, Mechanic Derek, Preslash kind of, TW: Self Harm, actually crazy Stiles, please forgive any OOC because this was originally not a fic, schizophrenic Stiles, the Sheriff isn't the best in this, up to interpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheArmsofaThief/pseuds/InTheArmsofaThief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you real?” Stiles asked, hardly knowing the words as he spoke them.  Stiles’s pulse throbbed in his veins.  He was terrified.  He was slipping.</p><p>“Yeah,” the man said.  “I’m real.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lunatic

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this as my final in my fiction writing class last semester. The characters aren't really Derek & Stiles, but I was inspired by them and decided to repurpose the story to make a fic. The only thing that didn't quiet transfer is the Sheriff's relationship to his son. So please forgive me and any potential OOC from him or the others. I'm really curious what you may think since it wasn't originally designed as a TW fic.

The wind was crisp.  It whistled through the trees despite the late summer air.  Years of passing seasons had littered the ground with dry leaves but the ones on the trees were still a lush green. The color looked muted though, an inky black in the dim light of the moon.  It was pale and full but the night was still dark, shadows upon shadows under the canopy.  There was something comforting about these woods.  Calming.  They were still at night, quiet, without strangers hiking, families picnicking.  This is why Stiles often found himself here.  He flexed his toes.  He wasn’t wearing shoes.

Stiles knew he should go home.  He knew he should tell his father.  He knew he didn’t quite recall how he got here, standing between the fir trees and oaks that held the universe behind their bark.  Stiles could feel a warren beneath his feet.  The earth was hollow.  Stiles should go home, but the paper moon held his eye.  His watch glowed, reading half past midnight.  He should go home.

Miss Morrell said last time this was a sign of relapse.  Miss Morrell classified this as odd behavior.  She told Stiles to report odd behavior.  It was easier to just pretend he was normal.  It was easier to keep quiet about the stars watching him or the way he could feel the tides of the ocean a full day’s drive from the shore.  His dad gave him those looks when he didn’t just pretend.

A howl sounded in the distance.  It could have been a wolf, or a coyote.  Bobcats howled.  It could have just been all in his head. 

Stiles should go home.

There were no crickets, Stiles noticed.  There had been, he was sure.  There was the scratchy chirp of bug legs before the wolf howled, but now it was quiet.  The air felt thick.  The calm was gone, replaced by a tension that dogs barked at through thick glass doors.  Mr. Lahey’s Doberman would be going crazy. 

Mr. Lahey’s Doberman would be running. 

Stiles should go home.  He turned, searching between the trees.  He may have been lost. There was a rustle in the distance.  The sound was deafening without the hoot of owls or chirp of crickets to mask the dangers in the dark.  The trees lost their voices.  He was lost.  Stiles stared at his bare feet, dirt caked between his toes and under his nails.  Little scratches all over.  He wondered why the earth was hollow but the air was so heavy.  A twig snapped behind him.  He turned, entering a staring contest with a deer.  Stiles won.  The air electrified for a brief moment and the deer bolted.  A second later something came crashing out of the patch of dense trees.

It froze, like the deer had.  Yellow teeth, wet with saliva, caught the moonlight.  Sharp like daggers.  Flat eyes, blank eyes.  The deer had such warm eyes, full of fear and timidity and life.  These eyes were empty.  “Are you real?” Stiles asked, hardly knowing the words as he spoke them.  Adrenaline spiked his system, pulse running the way his body wanted to.  His body rarely listened to itself.  Stiles won this staring contest too.  The blank eyes blinked.  Stiles could see the moment of passing, the moment the berserker faded into a being conscious of its surroundings.  It was like birth.  It was like magic.  Stiles watched it shift.  Features morphed from something too haggard and bestial into something more human until nothing but a man stood in worry and confusion.  Stiles continued to stare.  The man straightened, tall and broad, his hair a tousled mop on top his head.  He still looked wild.  

Stiles’s pulse throbbed in his veins.  He was terrified.  He was slipping.

“Yeah,” the man said.  “I’m real.”

“Don’t tell my dad,” Stiles blurted.  He didn’t want word to come back to his father that he was questioning things.  No news is good news.  No news is good news.  No news – Stiles turned to find his footprints.  He had gotten lost before.  It was easy to find his own prints versus the ones of people from the day.  He wasn’t wearing shoes. 

“Wait!”

Stiles ignored him, following his track backwards, a trail outwards.  Home. 

“I’m sorry,” the man said having caught up with Stiles.  It didn’t take much.  Stiles wasn’t going very fast.  Stiles walked faster.  “I didn’t mean to – hey!  I’m not – wait.  What did you mean don’t tell your dad?” Stiles didn’t answer.  “What’s your name?” he asked.

“You’re not from here,” Stiles said.  The man looked odd.  Normal, his face was normal, but his mouth was tense and open.  He looked like a stuffed dog.  Or someone trying not to sneeze.  His clothes were a bit torn, too.  It was hard to see with the trees only letting darts of moonlight through but it looked as if low hanging branches had clawed him on the shoulder.   

“Why do you say that?”

“You don’t know me.”

Stiles looked up again and caught his eyes.  His eyes.  Not the dark, blank things void of humanity, but crystal and blue and so deep they could be the ocean.  Salt water heals.  Stiles remembered the Kraken.  And sharks.  Stiles looked back down to find his footprints again.    

“What’s your name?” the guy asked, keeping pace with Stiles.

“What’s yours?”

“Derek.”

It sounded so normal, like a conversation between friendly strangers on a park bench during the early afternoon.  Stiles’s watch beeped at him.  It was one in the morning and the man was – no.  The man wasn’t a monster.  That was a trick.  That was a lie.  That wasn’t real.  “Okay,” Stiles said, his footprints finally leading him out of the woods and onto the sidewalk of his neighborhood. 

“Look, about back there,” Derek began.

“No.”

“No?”

Stiles sped up, his eyes focused on the now familiar path to his house.  He shook his head.  Etch-a-Sketch memory.  “Let the tide wash away the sand,” Miss Morrell would say.  Let the tide wash away what he had seen.  What he thought he saw.  It was low tide.  He could feel it with the pull of the moon.  The tide won’t wipe these prints for hours.  He shook his head again like the child’s toy sitting in the back of his closet. 

“Will you slow down?”

A hand came down on Stiles’s shoulder.  A wave crashed over him but the water was calm.  Stiles could feel the weight of it, the pressure and heat of Derek’s palm against the thin material of Stiles’s moth bitten sleep shirt.  He tried to remember. He tried to remember the crunch of the leaves, the eyes of the stars, the cosmos swirling beneath the Earth’s crust.  He recalled the others. 

Lydia, maybe seven, with her strawberry blonde hair in ringlets, who would hold his hand when she was scared.  The photographer in all black who told him how to properly fuck a girl and that only prissy brats went to college.  The old man, bald and covered in liver spots, who never talked, just cut apples with his pocket knife, eating slices with a loud crunch.  Jackson, who tricked him one too many times into doing something dangerous.  Did they feel this heavy?  This warm?  They were only the wind.

“Will you go away?” Stiles asked, not daring to look into those soulful eyes.

“How come you weren’t afraid?” he rushed to say.  “When you saw me…”

“I have a condition,” Stiles told Derek.  “My face doesn’t express emotion well.”  He dared to look at the man again.  His eyes were whirlpools.  The moon lit his face, gaunt and angular. 

“Oh.”  Derek’s eyes flickered over Stiles.  “You get so used to reading people’s faces you forget to read the rest of the body.  Here,” He reached out, fingers hovering over the crook of Stiles’s neck.  “The vein in your neck.  Your heart is hammering like a rabbit’s.”

Stiles noticed his feet had stopped.  Had stopped the moment he looked into Derek’s eyes.  And his heart _was_ beating like a rabbit’s.  But the rabbits were all asleep in the warren under his feet.  “This is my house,” Stiles said.  “Please go away.” Stiles turned up the driveway of Mrs. McCall’s place.  When he turned back, the man was gone.  Stiles stood in the gradient light pooling from the streetlamp near Mrs. McCall’s mailbox.  A moth fluttered in dark shadow against the glass.  Nothing else.  He looked for movement.  A shadow moved.  The moth’s wings.  Silence.

Crickets started to chirp. 

Stiles turned away from the street.  Stepping carefully over Mrs. McCall’s tulips, he made his way through her garden.  Their back yards bled together in a territory battle of mown grass.  It was taller on Stiles’s side, littered with rocks that bit into the calluses of his feet.

X

Stiles counted them again.  One big white one, two little orange ones, three blue ones, and half an oval one.  He wondered which ones explained last night.  If he needed more or less.  If he should tell his dad.  If he shouldn’t take them at all.  Stiles threw his head back and tossed them down his throat, chasing the pills with a swig of orange juice.  “Take your meds?” his dad asked not two seconds later, coming into the kitchen from the living room. 

He had his hand over the speaker of the wireless which was pressed between his ear and shoulder.  A high pitched garble streamed through the home line.  His dad watched for an answer and Stiles nodded.  “Good, good.”  His dad frowned at the voice on the phone.  His dad frowned at Stiles.  Worry lines were carved into his brow, deep creases that never faded anymore.  “Yes, thank you.  I’ll talk to him,” his dad said.  He clicked the red button to end the call and placed the wireless back in its wall charger.  His eyes never left Stiles.  “Mrs. McCall found footprints in her garden this morning.”

Stiles looked at the toast that stuck out of the toaster.  It had been sitting a while.  Probably cold now.  Stiles liked it when his toast was warm enough to melt the butter.  It tasted stale otherwise.

“Stiles!”

He focused on his father.  The man straightened his tie with purpose.  “Why do you do this?” he asked, deflating already.  “Why were you out last night?”

Stiles shrugged.  He flexed his toes against the linoleum.  “I just went for a walk.” 

His dad ran a hand over tired eyes.  “You need to get a grip, Stiles.  You can’t just do these things.  Eat your breakfast.”  He grabbed the dry toast and his briefcase and headed towards the door. 

Stiles looked at the box of cereal on the table.  They were out of milk.

“And be good while I’m out,” his dad pleaded.  “Kay, kid?”

“I’m twenty-eight,” Stiles mumbled. 

His dad’s eyebrows furrowed together and the corner of his mouth twitched a bit.  “Yeah, and you’re still living at your dad’s.”

The house felt suffocating in that moment.  His tomb.

Slam, slam.  His dad was out the door and in his car.  And Stiles was alone.  Slam, slam, he thought.  He didn’t even like Cheerios.  Stiles reached his hand in the box and pulled out a fistful of cereal, shoving it in his mouth. 

The doorbell rang.   

The dry grain and mushy sandpaper taste coated his mouth as he stopped chewing and stared at the door.  His dad was gone.  No one came when his dad was gone.  Stiles closed the lid of the Cheerios box and chewed quickly.  Mr. Lahey’s Doberman was barking wildly from the yard over.  The doorbell rang again and Stiles stumbled over his bare feet, clean now, on the way to answer it. 

“You.”

“Yeah.  Me.”

He looked different in the daylight.  His hair was rich with blacks so dark it looked like ink.  His skin was olive and warm.  The blue of his eyes looked like the water in the tropics it was so crystalline and sharp.  His cheeks looked less hollow, less haunted, less like he was being carved by the moon.  Derek was a handsome – Not a devil, Stiles reminded himself, not a monster. 

The Doberman barked.

“Why are you here?” 

He didn’t ask how the stranger found Stiles.  Derek was led to the wrong house in the dark, but it didn’t take much in this town for gossip to turn to the son of the poor Sheriff.  A cup of coffee at Auntie Reyes Diner and an honest smile was all it takes for some to tell all the town secrets.  Miss Morrell said things would settle eventually.  She’d been saying that for six years. 

Derek shuffled his feet against the worn out mat reading ‘We ome’ and muttered. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said, “about what you saw.”  His eyes zeroed in to the vein in Stiles’s neck.   “See, that’s weird.  You weren’t afraid when you opened the door, but when I bring up last night your heart sky rockets.  You saw me, right?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Stiles insisted, closing the door. 

Derek side stepped the attempt and pushed into the front hallway.  “Yes, you did,” he pressed.“I know you did. You looked me the eye and you helped me come to my senses. I know you saw me.”

“What did I see?” Stiles whispered, unnerved by the proximity of the stranger.

“I’m not a monster,” he said as his face shifted without the aid of the moon or the tide or the ink black trees.  Teeth sharper than Mr. Lahey’s Doberman.  A thicker brow, a hirsute jowl.  Those flat eyes, pupils blown.  “Not always.”  Derek’s face was already normal, that same pinched expression from the night before.  Thinking.  Hoping.  Confused.

“Is this real?  Are you real?”  He could feel the density of the air between them.  He could smell Derek’s spearmint toothpaste.  Nothing flickered.  Nothing blurred. 

“You think you’re crazy?” Derek realized.  Stiles watched as the man’s eyes brightened and saddened all in one swoop.  Glee, guilt, apology.  “You weren’t afraid of the monster, you’re afraid you might be insane.”

“I am insane.”

“You’re not though,” he stressed. 

“I think you should leave now.”

Derek sighed.  His shoulders slumped in resignation.  “Okay.”  He took a step back and opened the door, then hesitated.  After a moment Derek nodded and stepped outside.  Stiles spotted a brick red, rustic looking Camaro in his driveway.  “You like cars?”  Derek asked, catching his line of sight.  Stiles shrugged.  “Put that one together by scratch.  Keeps me grounded.”  Derek shifted his weight on the worn out mat.  Stiles thought of the model he had in his room, but in black.  “You were right,” Derek said, “I’m not from here.  Just got a job at Boyd’s Garage down on Bluff Crossing.”  He stepped backwards down the drive, “You know, you never told me your name.”

Derek paused at the car door. 

“Stiles.”

Back in his room, his driveway empty, Stiles dug into his closet and pulled out the red plastic rectangle.  It felt too small in his hands.  Stiles twisted the white knobs until a mess of black splattered the light grey background.  He closed his eyes and shook it clean.

X

At the groceries when Stiles slumped over the cart handle while his dad talked to the butcher, he caught a glimpse of a tall man.  Striking cheek bones.  Eyes rimmed by plum bags from sleepless nights.  Derek looked up and waved.  Distant smile.  He pushed his cart to the next aisle with a hurried blush and Stiles was left staring at nothing until his dad urged him onward. 

When his dad was pumping gas on the way back from Stiles’s weekly with Miss Morrell, he watched people mill in and out of the general store of the gas station.  Miss Morrell said staring was impolite.  His dad said Stiles freaked people because he didn’t blink.  Derek stepped out of the sliding doors, biting into a granola bar and a plastic bag of unknown items hanging from his fingers.  Derek didn’t look over to where Stiles was staring from the passenger seat of his father’s cruiser.  Derek turned the corner and a few minutes later the same red Chevy from earlier that week passed them. 

Stiles went on a walk in the day time, a sudden rush of energy not letting him sit still.  He was pulled into The Beacon Bean by the owner, a straight backed man with broad shoulders and greying hair who told him to sit and wait while he called Stiles’s father.  Stiles was given a free hot chocolate.  He waited, watching the birds in the sky, trying to ignore the headache from the pop playing over the café’s speakers and the idle chatter of other customers and the roar of machines making espressos.  His toes curled against the fake wood flooring as the bell above the door rang.  Derek walked in, headphones making him distant to the sounds Stiles couldn’t ignore.

Stiles tracked Derek as he order his drink at the counter, paid, waited.  Derek turned, as if searching for the eyes on him.  Their sights locked.  Stiles didn’t blink.  Derek called his name like a question just as the barista put his cup down.  The tall man picked up the drink and walked over, a tentative smile tugging at his pinched expression.  Miss Morrell told Stiles to not talk to strangers.  But how much of a stranger was Derek when he didn’t even know the coffee shop owner’s name, only his face.  “And always make sure someone you know can verify they’re there,” Miss Morrell would say.  But Derek bought a coffee.  And Stiles knew his name.  

Stiles looked away.  His hot chocolate was a muddy sort of warmth between his fingers.  “So, this is awkward,” Derek said, scratching the scruff on his chin.  “Can I sit here?”  With a jerky nod from Stiles, Derek took a seat across the small table.  “You okay?”  Stiles nodded again.  “Are you going to say anything?” 

After a second or so, Stiles looked up.  He caught the look in Derek’s deep blue eyes.  Curious, worried, amused.  Stiles shrugged.  Derek glanced sideways and frowned.  A group of girls much younger than them were unabashedly staring at Derek.  His Henley was tight across his chest and his sleeves were rolled up to expose lean muscled arms.  Girls liked that, Stiles supposed.  Derek checked the time on his phone and his frown worsened.  He didn’t look as handsome when his face pulled downwards. 

“I have to go.  Really just on a lunch break.  Sorry we didn’t get to actually talk.”  He stood and left The Beacon Bean with a slight wave a ghost of a smile.    

His father picked him up twelve minutes later, grip tight on his arm as he was dragged to the car.  “Jeeze, kid.  Did you take your meds today?”

“Yes,” Stiles responded automatically.

“God, you’re just like your mother,” he spat. 

X

He couldn’t see the sky well from his backyard.  At night it smelled sharp, like lightning cutting through the darkness.  The pale light make the leaves that blocked the moon seem to glow.  Stiles ignored the sneakers his dad made him wear to go grocery shopping or to his weekly and walked through the tall grass.  He stopped at the edge of Mrs. McCall’s yard.  “Stiles, you know you’ll just get yelled at,” a gruff voice said. 

Stiles closed his eyes.  “Go away,” he muttered.  “Go away, go away, go away.”

“Is that any way to treat an old friend?”

Stiles shivered, his litany stopping on his tongue.  A hulking man leaned against Stiles’s back porch.  “You’re not my friend,” Stiles said.  “You’re not real.”  Jackson’s hair was blonde and his face was suave with confidence.  The shadows didn’t fall right on his skin.  “You’re not real,” Stiles repeated. 

Jackson gave a smarmy laugh and stalked forward.  “Stiles.”

“Stiles?  Who are you talking to?”

Stiles snapped his head around.  “Derek?”  The tall man stood before him with a flashlight and the same frown from the coffee shop.  “What are you doing here?”  Derek gave an explanation Stiles didn’t hear.  He was too transfixed by the way dry leaves and small twigs crunched beneath his feet, the density of trees around them, the clearing above him just big enough to spot the half coin of moon in the sky.  He spun around, searching for tracks.  He didn’t remember how he got to the woods.

Derek’s hand came down on his shoulder.  “Stiles, you’re terrified.  What’s happened?” 

Jackson’s laugh filled the forest and Stiles turned into the warmth grounding him.  He wrapped his arms around Derek’s waist, desperately holding back tears.  Stiles inhaled Derek’s scent and concentrated on the steady thump of the other man’s heart.  After a moment, Derek let his arms wrap around Stiles and whispered soothing words into his ear.  “It’s okay,” he said.  “Let’s get you home.”     

X

Stiles liked when Derek smiled.  Derek made the ocean calm and made the earth more solid.  He visited when he could and scared Jackson away.  He never acknowledge the man eating apples in the corner of the living room.  Derek didn’t ask Stiles if he took his medication or how he was handling this week.  Derek didn’t tell him to stop acting weird.  He liked the picture of Stiles and his mom that sat on the mantle in the living room.  He never asked what happened.  Stiles told him anyway.  That she died, years ago, when Stiles was in junior high.  That Stiles had seen her do it. 

Stiles showed Derek the model in his bedroom, confessed that it was the only car he knew by name other than his mom' sold jeep that still sat in the garage. The model was a first generation Chevrolet Camaro.  Almost the same as Derek’s car.  Derek said he could stop by the garage sometime and he would teach Stiles how to fix an engine.  Stiles ventured outside again, in the day time, remembering to wear his sneakers.  No one pulled him inside.  Derek smiled when he showed up.  Sometimes they would get breakfast at Auntie Reyes together.  Stiles was happy to get away from cereal, even if it meant wearing shoes. 

In the privacy of Stiles’s house Derek would show his other face.  He told stories of how he ran for his life, then for years ran from himself.  How he could control it, normally.  How he needs to run sometimes.  How the new scents of the new woods after the move made him forget, for just a minute.  How Stiles’s steady, fearless heartbeat brought him back to normal. 

Stiles liked Derek’s stories.  But when he was gone, Jackson would show up.  He worried they were the same man.  That they were both him.  He didn’t tell Miss Morrell about Derek.  Or Jackson.  Or the man with the apples.  He didn’t want the confirmation. 

X

The silver dollar from nights ago had waned into nothing.  A black hole.  A coyote howled.  It was a coyote this time.  Or a wolf or a bobcat.  He didn’t know the difference in their cries.  But the crickets weren’t silent.  Stiles let the stillness of the woods relax his muscles.  A wind wound its way through the trees, soft and inviting.  The leaves were changing color.  It was too dark, but he could feel the way the trees prepared to shed like snakes.     

Blood was congealing in the crook of his knuckles.  He had picked out the shards of glass and washed his hands and dabbed the cuts with hydrogen peroxide using the cotton balls kept in the medicine cabinet.  Stiles put on globs of antibiotic ointment, not bothering to wrap them.  The fluorescents in the bathroom had glinted off the little bits of reflective surface on the linoleum.

Before escaping to the woods, Stiles stared at one of the larger shards, sharp and jagged.

It would be so easy.

Thunder clapped.  Stiles was walking through mud by the time he reached the sidewalk pavement.  The rain washed his hands of the blood and his feet of the forest floor.

X

The room stank of motor oil and gas fumes.  Sunlight came in through the garage window casting the rows of cars in an orange glow.  A few golden leaves scattered the speckled concrete.  There was a paint stain in the corner, black.  Stiles was wearing shoes, tan hiking boots his mom had bought him.  They were tight around his toes.  He should have worn his sneakers, but he missed his mom. 

His father was happy he was getting out.  Mr. Lahey phoned him whenever the neighbor caught sight of Stiles leaving the house.  It was progress, Miss Morrell told him at their weekly.  A good thing.  Socializing.  As long as Stiles remained aware, as long as he wore shoes and had his wallet and his watch, as long as he didn’t talk back to the wind or the sun or stop to feel the tides. 

Water from the drain pipe puddled at the wall outside.  Stiles watched through the open door as it found its way to the gutter, the rapid swirl of a street river.  He had flushed his pills that morning.  And the morning before.  Every morning since Jackson.  They weren’t working anyway.  Derek walked in from the back, wiping grease from his hands and a smile on his face.  His face was normal.  His teeth were straight and white.  He smiled.  Stiles’s tongue felt like chalk, a phantom Clozapine.

A breeze gusted into the garage bringing a few more leaves in. 

“What brings you in?”

Stiles shrugged, keeping his eyes on the leaves.  He scrunched his toes against the soles of his shoes. 

The tone in the air shifted, a dissonant chord played on a dog whistle.  “What happened to your hand?”    Stiles clenched his jaw in response, flexing his fingers against his jeans.  The fresh scabs stung and his teeth were like biting rocks. “Stiles,” Derek said with an aborted step forward.  “Stiles.”

Things were different in the day.  The clarity that came with light was callous.  Noisy families crowded the park and the woods, streets screamed with car horns and curses.  The floors of buildings were hard and while the universe still whispered in his ear it was harder to feel the ocean while standing on concrete, rubber soles stopping the conduct of electricity from the rotation of the earth.  A car lift sounded, a screechy whir of gears and clunky metal.  Someone was on the phone nearby and a radio was playing in the back.  Commercials.

Stiles’s hands shook at his sides.  “I couldn’t see my face.”  It was like staring into heat waves, a mirage in the mirror that subtracted his reflection with hiccups of color and a smudged background.  “I couldn’t see myself.”

Derek’s hand gripped the back of Stiles’s neck.  He had raced forward, dropping the grease rag, but Stiles lost that time as he remembered the fear and rage and pain.  He hadn’t swept the floor yet.  “Hey, look at me.”  Stiles’s chest burned.  He wasn’t breathing.  “Look at me.I’m here.  I’m with you.  You’re okay.  Everything is okay.”

The heat of Derek’s palm cupped his cheek, the other burning at the nape of his neck.  Stiles closed his eyes to the worry in Derek’s voice.  “I couldn’t see my face but you still have two.”  A hot tear rolled across his cheek as he gasped for air. 

“Stiles, come on.  Everything’s fine.”

“I don’t even know if you’re real.” The tears came like waterfalls, clogging his nose and filming his eyes.  Stiles couldn’t see.  He couldn’t see himself last night.  Things were disappearing before him and we wasn’t sure what was even there to begin with.  Derek’s face went out of focus, the sharp cut of his cheek bones melting with each struggled breath.

“Of course I’m real. I’ve even talked to your dad.  You’ve seen me talk to your dad.” Derek’s grip was like iron, an anchor.  Stiles wasn’t sure if it was tethering him to reality or pulling him to the depths of the ocean.  He was drowning on land.

“But how much of you?  I’m crazy Der.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“No, but I would. And I wouldn’t even know it.” 

Stiles buried his head into Derek’s shoulder, weeping openly now, forcing air in his lungs.  Derek asked if he should call Stiles’s dad.  “Never mind,” he said.  “That was a stupid question.  Want me to drive you home?”  Stiles shook his head.  They stayed there until the tides changed and the world quieted.  “You should take your medicine.” 

“How did you know?”

“Stiles, you’re freaking out about not having seen your face.  Did this ever happen before?”

“I don’t like the way they make me feel.”

Derek sighed, one hand stroking Stiles’s back in soothing arcs.  “But you could see yourself, right?  When you took your meds.  You were there.  You were whole.”

“Was I?”

“Talk to what’s her name, Morrell.  Maybe she’ll change your prescriptions, but don’t just stop taking them, okay?” 

Stiles agreed reluctantly, a bitter “Fine,” falling out as he pulled himself away from the comforting arms.  He started for the Camaro, a third generation model.  Rust red but not rusting.  Stiles knew Derek had a new one, a black one, that had once belonged to his sister, but Derek like the one he built more.  He paused, his fingers on the door handle. “Why are you so nice to me?”

Stiles didn’t look back at Derek who had his face pinched to think.  “You understand,” he said after a moment.  His face was still pulled in, tight lines around his mouth and eyes.  Stiles saw it through the reflection on the car.  A stuffed dog.  “You know what it’s like to question everything, to hide the parts of you other people wouldn’t accept.”

Stiles tapped his toes.  They were beginning to hurt.  He opened the car door and slipped inside. 

Derek drove Stiles home.  It was quiet at first.  He wouldn’t be able to stay, they both knew.  He had work yet to do and his break was long over.  Stiles looked over the middle console at the way Derek gripped the steering wheel.  Smears of black still stained his skin where the rag didn’t catch completely.  Nail’s bitten to the quick.  Cracked knuckles.  They held the aging leather like porcelain.

Derek glanced at Stiles and laughed.  “What’s got you so happy?”

“How can you tell?” Stiles asked, taken aback.  “You can always tell.”

“Flat affect doesn’t stop you completely from projecting your feelings.”

“But no one else can ever tell.”  Not his dad. Not Miss Morrell.  Not even his mom had been able to.  “You can always tell the difference.”  Stiles itched for his Etch-a-Sketch. 

Derek sighed.  He kept his eyes on the road, deliberate.  “I have two faces, Stiles.  Two faces, but they’re both me.  And just because I’m wearing one doesn’t mean the other goes away.  When I met you, I wasn’t myself.  I had,” he paused, taking a moment to flip the turn signal and shift lanes.  “I slipped.  You weren’t afraid of me though,” he added softly.  You’re still not afraid of me.”

Stiles thought of Mr. Lahey’s Doberman.  Of the crickets.  They knew.  They always knew.  They sensed it.  Stiles was silent for the rest of the ride, tendril spirits reaching out to him from the passing trees.   

“Stiles,” Derek’s hand rested on Stiles’s wrist after shifting the car into park.  Another wave, another calm.  It felt so solid.  “Stiles, please stop running from help.”

Stiles wanted to say he came to Derek, remind him who he ran to.  He didn’t.  He said nothing.  “Take your meds, please,” Derek said.  Stiles frowned and got out of the car.

There was a note on the counter when Stiles reached the kitchen.  His dad came home for lunch, left a twenty for pizza since he was staying at work late, wanted a call to check in when Stiles got the note, was glad his son was finally ‘getting a hold’ of himself.  He must not have seen the mess in the bathroom.  “Get a grip,” Stiles muttered under his breath before dialing the office.  His brain was broken, dad.  He couldn’t just get a grip.  

Later, in the confines of his room, Stiles stared at his model car.  He didn’t really know cars, but he made that model with his mom over the summer when he was ten.  He never knew how smooth it took curves or its easy bursts of speed before Derek.  His Etch-a-Sketch was still in the back of his closet. 

X

The air was crisp, biting.  It was a half-moon again tonight, mirrored from when Jackson first showed up again.  The stars were like fireflies scattered around it.  A new layer of leaves crunched beneath his feet.  He shivered.  Stiles should have brought gloves.  He should have worn shoes.

“You know, there are actual predators in these woods.  You might want to be more cautious.”  Derek stalked out from behind the trees, his eyes glinting in the starlight like a cat’s in a photograph, like a wolf.  Yellow and flat, just for a moment.  People’s eyes didn’t do that.  People and horses.  They got red-eye.  Stiles was sure.

“I like it here at night.  The sea is calm, endless.”

Derek walked over to where Stiles stood, staring at the stars.  He laced their fingers together.  It warmed Stiles. He liked these little touches.

Lydia danced in the moonlight, still seven after all these years.  She had held his hand when his mom died and she had held his hand when he woke up in the hospital six years ago after listening to Jackson.  He tried to blink her away.  She flickered and faded, but never really left.  Miss Morrell said it can take a few months for adjustments in medication to work fully.  He hadn’t seen Jackson in a while.        

Stiles squeezed Derek’s hand and looked up and caught his smile, the way the light made his eyes look like pale coins, the single freckle above his left eyebrow.  He feels real.  As strong as the way his father claps his back or squeezes his shoulder but nicer.  Warm.  Calm.  This is real, he thinks.  Crickets chirped, and he wondered.     

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.
> 
> [FIND ME ON TUMBLR](http://inthearmsofathief.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also! I'm made a webseries about werewolves! [The Werewolf Diaries](http://www.youtube.com/c/TheWerewolfDiaries)
> 
> **HEY!!! NaNoWriMo is coming up!!! Check out[my tumblr posts](https://inthearmsofathief.tumblr.com/tagged/nanowrimo) about it to learn how you can follow my original work**


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